Sensorless Control of Induction Motors by Reduced Order Observer with MCA EXIN + Based Adaptive Speed Estimation

This paper presents a sensorless technique for high performance induction machine drives based on neural networks. It proposes a reduced order speed observer where the speed is estimated with a new generalized Least-Squares technique based on the MCA EXIN + (Minor Component Analysis) neuron. With this regard, the main original aspects of this work are the development of two original choices of the gain matrix of the observer, one of which guarantees the poles of the observer to be fixed on one point of the negative real semi-axis in spite of rotor speed, and the adoption of a completely new speed estimation law based on the MCA EXIN + neuron. The methodology has been verified experimentally on a rotor flux oriented vector controlled drive and has proven to work at very low operating speed at no load and rated load (down to 3 rad/s corresponding to 28.6 rpm), to have good estimation accuracy both in speed transient and in steady-state and and to work correctly at zero speed, at no-load and at medium loads. A comparison with the classic full-order adaptive observer under the same working conditions has proven that the proposed observer exhibits better performances in terms of lowest working speed and zero speed operation.